Three days before the eruption, Donald and Natalie Parker and their nephew Rick parked their green 1972 Pontiac Grand Prix about 8-1/2 miles from the volcano and hiked to a nearby cabin to inspect their mining claim. They were in the designated “blue zone,” which was open to businesspeople who signed liability wavers with the state, which the Parkers did. Volcano scientists were not as worried about people in the blue zone because they were expected to survive a typical vertical eruption. But the initial eruption of Mt. St. Helens was lateral (sideways) not vertical. The blast killed the Parkers and flattened and seared their car, which remains as a stark reminder to the 57 people who perished that day.

Here’s how it looked not long after the eruption.

I was in Portland just about two years before Mt. St. Helens erupted, and noted what a stately, snow-covered peak it was. Its eruption was the deadliest and most catastrophic volcanic eruption ever in the US. 57 lost their lives, 250 homes destroyed, and a huge area of forest was devastated. The mountain now is literally a shell of its former self.

I’m getting a bit carried away here, but I’ve never seen this amazing photo from Wikipedia, shot 60 miles away. The cloud stem is 10 miles wide, and the mushroom is 40 miles wide and 15 miles high.

We’ve gone back to the mountain in recent years; there’s an excellent visitor center directly across from the mountain looking into its crater, and one can’t really get a sense of the extent of the impact without driving through it.

I remember when this took place. I was only 7 yrs old, and living in Kirkland, Washington at the time. Although I didn’t actually see St. Helens blow its top, I remember my dad telling me that Mt. St. Helens had erupted. I remember wondering what he meant by that. It wasn’t until the next few days later when I saw photos of the aftermath, the devastation, the death toll, property damage, etc. I remember wondering to myself “what the hell happened?!” I was told about it, but I couldn’t grasp what had happened, even then.

I visited this location in 1983. A lot off damage caused by this natural event. One of the people I recalled reading and learning about was Harry Truman from spirit lake. The elderly man who lived the area he lived in..

A very evocative take on a CC. Living in Vancouver, BC we were close enough to the blast that some said they could feel the accompanying quake or hear it, I never did. Luckily winds took the ash cloud away from us. Sometimes its quite humbling when you think about how seismically active this part of the world is, recorded human history is so short here. If you ever have a chance to take one of the Air Canada Dash-8 flights from YVR to PDX they often get a great aerial view of the crater.

I remember watching a Discovery channel movie on it(or maybe it was a mini series?), it too was unbearably cheesy. Had the typical disaster movie plot – scientist diiscovers problem, problem gets denied by big shot government guy, problem happens sooner and worse than expected, everyone struggles to survive and ultimately science guy prevails and government guy gets humbled/killed

If I were to guess time has simply taken it’s toll, the event likely made the steel brittle and there’s been nothing to protect the bare steel since 1980, so additional corrosion and pretty much any weight on it, couple inches of snow, a small animal walking over it etc. could collapse it further. I’m actually surprised it’s not worse

I remember it. It was called St. Helens, and Art Carney played the Harry Truman character. In the movie, he drove a pink ’56 Caddy with gold turbine wheels.
The government guy was Henry Darrow, a well known 60s and 70s character actor.

@roger628, I don’t believe that was the movie/show that @XR7Matt was referring to. I believe he was referring to an entirely different program than the TV drama about Harry R. Truman, which, as you pointed out, starred the inimitable Art Carney

Snow loading will slowly crush old cars over time. Figure every heavy winter pushed down at 30-50lbs/sq. ft. I”ve seen plenty of old cars parked at higher altitude in Northern CA that have been crushed.

You can see what appears to be the same stump on the passenger side of the car. I don’t think that is where it was parked, before the eruption, as it is on top of a rather large log. I do believe though that is where it has been parked since either late morning May 18th, 1980 or at least since they cleared the road once clean up had begun, either pushed onto the log by the eruption or by they those who cleared the road.

The first three photographs in this article are,
from the top down, a wrecked Grand Prix,
photographed from aft, right-hand side,
next, that same Grand Prix, photographed
from forward, left-hand side of the wreck,
and finally, a Grand prix photographed
head-on inside a fenced-off area, with a
kiosk in the immediate foreground, titled
“Death and Life”. We can safely assume
that the Grand Prix in the top two
photographs is in the same exact location
in those top two photographs, as evidenced
by the stone & log fence structures of which
part of is visible in both photos.

Once again: Is the Grand Prix in the third
photograph down(the one inside the chain
link fence) the same car as that one
in the first two photos from the top of the
article down?

I belive that the car in the historical photograph inside the fence with the sign is in the same location as the modern photos. The stump it is sitting along side appears to be the same one in the same location although it is more rotted and thus smaller 35 years later.

I would guess that the roof was crushed down more to keep people from crawling inside of it when they redid the road and wanted to remove the fence.

Anonymous

Posted May 9, 2016 at 4:51 PM

“I would guess that the roof was crushed down more to keep people from crawling inside of it when they redid the road and wanted to remove the fence.”

No; it’s not the same car. By sheer coincidence, there were two ’72 GPs flattened by the volcano within very close distance of each other. 🙂

Seriously; can you not see how the surroundings of the GP would have changed by nature and the Park Service in the course of 35 years?

Scoutdude

Posted January 31, 2016 at 2:57 PM

Plus in the first modern shot you can see a sign in front of the car that certainly looks like it is in the same location as the sign in the foreground of the historical photo. .

YourTVPictureStinksICanFixIt

Posted January 31, 2016 at 4:17 PM

Sorry guys. I sincerely do not believe they are one and
the same.

Consider when this disaster happened – 1980. Seven
years after model year 1973. It is very likely that two
examples of the same 1973 make/model might have
been within such a huge blast radius. It’s called
temporal proximity: The Grand Prix was a popular
and heavily bought car in its day, and even 5-10
years hence there could still be many operational
examples of it relatively close to each other.

I own a popular make of a 2008 car. It’s 2016. And
there are still many 2008 models like it on roads
near the one I live on. Same temporal proximity
principle.

James Slick

Posted January 31, 2016 at 7:33 PM

Are popular and heavily bought the same?

P Kissiah

Posted November 30, 2016 at 3:48 AM

It is definitely the same vehicle. In the fenced in photo, the shot is relatively soon after the blast. The car was fenced in to preserve the position and the car itself for posterity until a more lasting solution. The first 2 photos are the SAME car as in the 3rd photo after the park service was able to preserve the site (again for posterity, and as a tribute to the owners who lost their lives) in a more attractive way. It is sitting in the same position in which it was parked when the owners left it. All of that is easily researched online. It doesn’t take a sleuth to figure out that the scenery would have changed in the intervening years after clean up and regrowth. Why is that hard for you to understand?

I’m with PictureStinks. Did they at one time just build a fence around it and then tear it back down? The car in the fence even looks to be a different color than the unfenced one. And I see no common “stumps” in any of the pictures. He has a valid question and argument. And in 1980 there were a lot of 1972 Grand Prixs on the road. And no, popular and heavily bought are not the same thing. I loved Grand Prixs, which would make it a very popular car to me, but even though it was popular to me, I couldn’t afford a new one, therefore not a heavily bought car by me. So even though I wanted one, I couldn’t have one.

Don Andreina

Posted February 1, 2016 at 8:18 PM

Perhaps it’s best to read the comments below, particularly @Matt’s.

The large stump/trunk to the ‘right’ of the car is apparent within the cyclone wire as well as in the second shot by Curtis Perry. The stone fence on the ‘left’ of the car has been added, but in both scenarios there appears to be a road/path/flattened area in the same place.

That morning, being wildly hungover in a manner customary for the time, my Father called wondering if I were still alive, as I was 40 miles as the crow flies southwest. He, in Spokane, was engulfed with ash and it was completely dark. I had the use of a Hess-Eisenhardt Cadillac convertible and took it even closer to the Cedars Golf Club and broke 80 for the first time while watching the mountain spew. With that confluence of events, I have not forgotten one detail.

I to remember that day well. A number of friends and I had planned a bike trip for the day. Getting ready that morning I heard a boom, all the way in Woodinville, WA, while standing in front of my dresser getting out clothes.

My friend’s dad arrived in his van shortly there after and we went on our way. That afternoon when we were picked up was when we learned that St Helen had finally had the big eruption.

The immensity of the eruption is evident from how much of the mountain is simply gone, blown away as dust and debris. There is a photo sequence of the actual eruption, taken with a Pentax Spotmatic still camera. It clearly shows that the mountain exploded sideways, below the summit; unseen below the huge dust/debris cloud, the mountaintop then collapsed, pulverizing itself into dust.

This photo is more tragic than you probably guessed. That is an 11 yr old boy named Andy Karr. His brother Daniel (9 yrs old) and father Day Karr were also killed. His mother had held out hope for a few days that they survived before Andy’s body was found in the bed of his father’s pickup.

This Volvo belonged to staff photographer Reid Blackburn of the Clark County Columbian. He was covering the disaster for the newspaper, and was killed. His last roll of photos was found a couple of years ago, undeveloped in the newspaper’s archives.

As someone who cannot feel religious fervor or the presence of an overseeing deity, I can say that the most spiritual journey I have ever taken was on a July day about 7 years ago when I went with my family on the route into the blast zone of Mt. St. Helens. I was overcome with the power of natural forces and the beauty left in the wake of the eruption as the land is gradually reclaimed by the living. It builds slowly as you travel inward, where more and more weathered tree trunks appear, arrayed in a radial pattern from ground zero. There were purple flowers in bloom amongst shards of gray wood everywhere you looked, and this was over thirty years after the eruption. I must admit, I secreted a foot long splinter in my knapsack, and I keep it on my bureau to remind me of that day.

I will never forget going out to my car one morning just a few weeks after the blast to find a light coating of ash on it, and this was in New York.

I recognized that back bumper in an instant, before even seeing the text or title, and thought “nooooooooooo!”. That year/model is one of my all-time favorites.

Then I read the text. I knew I’d heard that story in years past, at least a couple of times, but had never seen the pictures. Pretty sure I even Googled a bit when I first heard it (~10yrs ago) and came up empty-handed. Closest I ever got was seeing a few frames of it on some cable nature special. A sad story indeed.

Must say, though, I’m amazed at how well the fiberglass nose held up… seems most of them developed cracks without taking nearly as much punsihment!

Does anyone know what happened to Reid Blackburn’s Volvo? There are photos online, like above, before Blackburn’s body was recovered and then others with the driver’s door shoveled out. Apparently it was removed from the blast zone and was moved to a museum owned by Clara Ottosen along the Spirit Lake Highway.

Is it there today and are there any pictures from recent times?

Finding photos of the KOMO TV Mercury Monarch is easy but cyberspace turns up no evidence of the Volvo.

Thanks for writing this, Paul. I visited this spot in 2001 as a student with a geology field trip. It’s nice when two of my passions(geology and cars) overlap. I was told at the time that all those subsequent winters’ snowpacks further compacted the car.

Family took my Grandfather and his ’78 Caprice to Washington after the death of my Grandmother. I think the Cashmere area. Both survived the ash and made it back to Nebraska.

A movie buff friend had a copy of a movie starring Art Carney as a true unique old mountain man that drove a ’54 or so Cadillac. Both the Carney character and the Cadillac perished in the eruption. I believe the movie was simply called Mt. St. Helens. I’ve tried a few times to locate a copy.

My dad was familiar with Truman as he used to attend scout camp nearby every summer during the late 1940s – early 1950s.

Our family picked huckleberries just east of the summit in 1982. The fir branches were still encrusted with ash and small rocks.

There is a single-lane paved, curvy forest road on the east side of the mountain (IIRC) that was used in at least one car commercial some years ago – for Mazda for sure, and I think some others. You could see the still-standing dead trees in the background.

We did see that car while we were there – I can’t remember if the fence and/or sign were there at the time.

[edit] – car-related trivia: the morning of the eruption, I was attending an automotive swap meet at the Benton-Franklin County Fairgrounds in Kennewick, WA. I bought a NOS aftermarket vacuum-assist shift linkage for my 1941 Chevrolet Special Deluxe sedan, and a NOS (still sealed inside the cardboard can) Delco-Remy headlight high beam switch (I couldn’t resist – I opened it once I got it home).

I didn’t even know the eruption had happened while I was at the swap meet, but I remember everything about that morning (I was almost 15 at the time).

Partial spoiler: When you watch the documentary at the visitors center, there’s a spectacular last scene… after the movie ends.

The way the entire passage inward works is a timeline (coming in from the West, as we did). You stop at a series of visitors locations where you learn of the eruption’s effects at that distance away from ground zero. When i went there about 7 years ago, it was startling to see how little tree growth has resumed in the area closest to the mountain.

I cannot over emphasize what a spiritual experience a visit to Mount St. Helens is.

Paul, great write-up on a very poignant topic. I was only 13 at the time of the eruption, and I remember feeling somewhat “scared” at the notion of a volcano erupting and killing innocent people. Even living across the country in a very different landscape, it still makes me wonder about the power of nature and how it can change our lives at any given moment.

Wow. I was a very young child when the eruption happened, and remember reading articles/dramatizations about it in early reader stuff like Highlights and Cricket. The import of the tragedy was obvious but as a child I didn’t understand or had the tools to analyze the devastation. I do remember being scared that such a thing could happen (in suburban NJ!). This article has been enlightening, sorry I missed it first time around.